I want to control difuse and even color variations of specular based on facing ratio so that one end of a ramp relates to one and the other end relates to zero... in other words I want my ramp assigned to the faceing ratio returned value...
How do I set that up.

I used to do thyis in lightwave but Im a little confused about how to go about it in Maya... do I require layered shaders or does that needlessly complicate the issue?

Hm, I don't know if that's so obvious... this is one of the many little things that bug me about the Maya renderer... this effect should be a single node or parameter somewhere, called Falloff, when you turn it on you access the ramp. A 'mappable' button to add some texture on top of it. Intuitive and quick, yet not sacrificing any flexibility. (Because you could still have the utility nodes for those who like to spend weeks testing different networks.)

edit: yes I know I can just make MEL buttons for this, and perhaps many other things I find are missing, but not for all... and the fun of making your own buttons with your own icons, and searching and installing free scripts, qiuckly grows old. Especially at version-change time, or 're-install' time...

There is this node called clearCoat that has the same effect. But even though it might take a few extra clicks using the sampler info>ramp technique, i don't think many people care about that node. I know i don't

Quote:Originally posted by Stahlberg Hm, I don't know if that's so obvious... this is one of the many little things that bug me about the Maya renderer... this effect should be a single node or parameter somewhere, called Falloff, when you turn it on you access the ramp. A 'mappable' button to add some texture on top of it. Intuitive and quick, yet not sacrificing any flexibility. (Because you could still have the utility nodes for those who like to spend weeks testing different networks.)

but they would have to make this for diffuse, transparency, reflectivity, ... - this would be quite some overhead for the interface - having all this checkboxes and remap buttons

Quote:Originally posted by Stahlberg this effect should be a single node or parameter somewhere, called Falloff, when you turn it on you access the ramp. A 'mappable' button to add some texture on top of it. Intuitive and quick, yet not sacrificing any flexibility. (Because you could still have the utility nodes for those who like to spend weeks testing different networks.)

The "ramp shader" (added in Maya 4.5) includes editable gradients on a lot of parameters. You can add points and edit the graph on a reflectivity gradient and simulate the fresnel effect all within that 1 node, or edit a color gradient based on a center to edge tansition or other dependencies. It certainly doesn't replace everything that you could build in hypershade, but it does give more convenient access to a lot of effects.

It isnt as straight forward as I thought. Something is NOT working with the ramps and facing ratio.

It looks correct on the little preview balls but It seems that when I use layered shaders and blend in anything at all I get strange sharp edged and random appearing results on my uv mapped objects. What am I missing? Im sure some of you have had similar results when trying to use this.

What im trying to do is blend a little color shift accross a womans face... yellow in the faceing, through red across the meat of the model, and blue in the glancing angle... again all very subtle. Im getting random globs of color, that have little to do with the faceing angle.

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